There’s lots of talk recently about the wealth of Jeff Bezos. There are maps comparing his wealth to entire countries, a “You are Jeff Bezos” game where you can spend his money on different things - like paying their fair-share of taxes, and a graphic that puts his wealth in perspective. A recurring point is that most people simply cannot fathom the amount of money he has. The number is $150 billion. My favorite attempt to bring the number into human terms is Quartz’s article, “The average US worker would need 10 times the length of all human history to earn as much as Jeff Bezos”. This beautifully captures the point that someone does not simply earn or work for such an amount of money, but rather captures it. We, at degrowth.info, thought a similar calculation would be interesting. We wanted to know how many humble (but hopefully useful) projects like ours Jeff Bezos’ wealth could pay for. In case you haven’t heard already, degrowth.info is improving its site to better support the degrowth community and improve the usability of the platform – this will cost 7,500€.
The negotiators at this year's COP25 in Madrid achieved nothing, despite warnings from many voices about the acceleration of the climate crisis. The UN climate negotiations in Madrid, COP25, have amounted to precious little. The extended talks have provided the opportunity for petrol states and developed countries to excise the red lines of developing countries from the text of the...
Introducing a series of proposals for a truly transformative GND The Green New Deal is on everyone’s lips and policy platforms. Liberal pundit Thomas Friedman coined the term in 2007, and Left parties in the UK called for a Green New Deal during the recession that followed the 2008 global financial crash. Last year, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez rebooted the idea in the United Sta...
By Corinna Burkhart Humans get used to quite a lot of things and live their daily life through a set of what we can call habits. Everyday experiences are not much worth a thought as long as everything is like it always is. This can be driving by car to town, only to get stuck in the usual traffic jam, or something very simple like flushing the toilet or using knife and fork to eat a grilled pi...
